DVD Reviews

Frustrating is the word that comes to mind after sitting through this latest attempt to lift Australian cinema out of its doldrums, away from the usual indie-fair, and to a more mainstream, international audience...

Unknown wants to be an edge-of-your-seat thriller.  It wants to recapture the glory of Taken and The Bourne Identity and even grabs at some basic Hitchcockian themes. Unfortunately, it never lives up to what...

Woody Allen’s creative second wind continues in the sails of his latest overseas production.  Leaving Manhattan once again, after the ill-received Whatever Works (a film that should have worked a lot better than it actually did)...

Leave it to Orson Welles to tackle the subject of continued fascism after WWII.  Never one to shy away from topicality, left-wing minded Welles directs The Stranger, after stroking the coals of paranoia and isolation with unapologetic opening...

Ed Helms and company give heartland-comedy refreshing new life with the recent Sundance darling, Cedar Rapids. Helms, the executive producer of the film as well as its main character, is slowly inching his sweet little naïve self into the...

There’s a workinghorse-like mentality to all of Tony Scott’s films.  You certainly know what to expect.  Always enjoyable and seldom misfiring, his catalog of film is the stuff of legend (from Top Gun to Déjà Vu).  Recently though, the machinery of...

Vampire films are as prolific as zits on a teen’s face. While there is something of a buzz the last couple of years about the fanged ones being the ‘it’ subject to mine right now, the truth is they have never really gone away. From Nosferatu into the 21^st century...

Before I get too far ahead of myself, let me explain to you why I am even giving this film even one star. It boils down to one actress: Nicky Whelan. You know, the barista from the trailers.  The one the two idiots lustfully gawk...

Bursting forth with the cinematic speed of zooming muscle cars and the urgency of flooding nose bleeds, Drive Angry is a 70’s cinephile’s pleasure. I’d add “guilty” to that pleasure terminology if the film sucked. In fact, it does not...

British TV writer and Filmmaker, Christopher Morris got the idea for Four Lions, a British satire about a group of men bent on jihad, from three years of research in which he spoke with imams, police...

There’s a dangerous sense of urgency that outlines the case for first-time director Michael Webber’s The Elephant in the Living Room.  In spite of its playful and clever title, this is one documentary that is deadly serious about...

It’s been ten years since Memento was originally released to universal acclaim.  Look at what director Christopher Nolan has accomplished since then: Insomnia, The Prestige, Batman Begins...

From the opening few comical seconds of Paramount’s Rango, it is evident that its primary source of inspiration has its roots in the iconic spaghetti westerns that Sergio Leone once made. The water-drained deserts, the hot as hellfire sun...

The go-go ‘80s get another loving celluloid tribute with Take Me Home Tonight, a film that succeeds (but just barely), not by poking fun at the decade of leg warmers, big hair, and even bigger cell phones, but rather by embracing...

You know you are dealing with a real “goodfella” when it takes two films to tell your life story.  Jacques Mesrine was that type of larger-than-life figure of the criminal scene.  Publicity hound or philosopher; both were...

Modern crime capers don’t get much better than Steven Soderbergh’s slick take on Elmore Leonard’s Out of Sight.  Always a dazzler with rich material, Soderbergh has a wonderful habit of giving his audiences exactly what they want: style and...

You’re groaning already.  I know you are.  Deep down inside, there’s a part of your soul that cannot believe there is yet another retelling, respooling, redux, retread deluxe (the KING SIZED) version of Charlotte Brontë’s...

Good grief, Charlie Brown, is this movie ever really awful dinner theatre offerings.  Uninspired and generally boring, Red Riding Hood plays out its tale of revenge as if it really were a dish best served cold - with no blood and no heart...

I love L.A. What other city affords such an enjoyable opportunity to make fun of, as it’s being slowly and methodically dismantled, piece-by-piece by an invading alien force?  The string of potential jokes...

There’s a sense of timeless purity that encases Walt Disney’s Bambi in a shell of cinematic quality.  From the kids’ voices that grace the beginning of Bambi’s life to the first...

As the FBI warning flittered across my television screen, I wondered just what impact this movie would have upon me.  I had heard the stories; heard just how maddening the documentary was; heard just how insane it drove folks with...

Positioning itself in a believable world where the apocalypse is brought about by soulless zombies, AMC’s The Walking Dead took cable television by storm last year.  The show juggled itself between moments of hard-hitting violence...

Director Todd Phillips has been around the movie-making track for quite some time now, and, after the monster success of The Hangover, he has been in the enviable position of riding that gravy train with biscuit wheels, where...

Written by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, Paul sucks upon the Spielberg/Lucas tit until all the milk and laughs have run dry – and then it keeps on sucking for good measure.  Amusing although a little too long, there’s no denying that Paul is a geeked-out...

Coming straight out of another era of filmmaking, Sharktopus begs to ask the tough question that Hollywood won’t.  What’s wrong with a slice of sci-fi cheese?  If you ask famed producer of all things mighty and...

The film opens upon a closed stage curtain.  Slowly, the dull curtain opens to reveal a lone figure on its dusky stage.  With back to the audience, Sucker Punch – hiding what it truly is - begins its dreamlike trance with a web of slow-motion...

As an actor, Thomas McCarthy has gone largely unrecognized, toiling away in a long laundry list of generic character roles that’s no fewer than two or three scroll depths on IMDB: Meet the Parents, Little Fockers, The Wire, Law & Order, etc. We...

I would watch a Clint Eastwood film about grass growing. The man is just that good. Not every film of the now 31 film catalogue is a winner by any stretch, but whether an Oscar winner, a fan favourite, or a miss—at least inasmuch that Eastwood...

While this reviewer has never limited his exposure to any type film because of age, genre, language, topic—anything you could think of that can sometimes put one off at first glance—I, like anyone else have my preferences. At the bottom of...

Source Code proves that director Duncan Jones and his particular brand of minimalist sci-fi is not the product of flash-in-the-pan gimmickry.  Jones, in his second movie out of the gate, proves that he absolutely deserves to stand alongside...